gfiles magazine

December 9, 2014

Fed up with constant complaints from the Chief Ministers of
Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Delhi regarding the transfer and posting of
IAS officers within the AGMUT cadre, the Home Ministry had set up a Joint Cadre
Authority headed by the Home Secretary. The Chief Secretaries of Arunachal
Pradesh, Mizoram, Goa and Delhi are the other members. Transfer and postings of
IAS officers, excepting the postings of Chief Secretaries and Administrators of
UTs, is now decided by the JCA. Till now, only a few meetings have taken place
but it appears that the Home Ministry has landed itself in another round of
controversies. The Chief Secretaries now find the JCA to be a convenient
platform to settle their personal scores against officers whom they don’t like
personally. As a consequence, some officers who deserve to be posted in a
particular segment of the cadre find themselves landing in faraway places.
Sources disclosed that there are some officers who are blue-eyed boys of some
Chief Secretaries who never step out of Delhi. It seems any Chief Secretary has
a veto power during the proceedings of the JCA and the MHA no longer remains
the real cadre-controlling authority. Minister Rajnath Singh has to take a call
on doing away with the dominance of the Chief Secretaries in the JCA. Will he
do it?

Manohar Lal Khattar, the newly elected Chief Minister of Haryana,
is facing an uphill task in selecting the new Chief Secretary of Haryana. As a
stop-gap arrangement, PK Gupta, a 1980-batch officer of the Haryana cadre, has
taken charge as Chief Secretary of the State on December 1, but he will
superannuate on December 31, 2014. So, a new Chief Secretary has to be selected
from the 1982-batch IAS officers. The stakes are high. The builder lobby of
Haryana is at the cross-roads after Khattar has taken over as Chief Minister.
Some leading builders are learnt to be in touch with the RSS leadership and are
pushing for the appointment of their “yes man”. Gupta’s selection is an
indication that other 1980-batch IAS officers—Ashok Lavasa, Madhusudan Prasad
and Sanjay Kothari—are not available for the prestigious post. So, the
selection has to be made from among three top competent officers of the 1982
batch—Deependra Singh Dhesi, KK Jalan and Dr Dalip Singh. Jalan and Dhesi are
posted in Delhi whereas Dalip Singh has gone back to his parent cadre and
joined the State on November 28. Khattar has to be cautious as the builder
lobby has already spread its tentacles into the Haryana administration,
especially in HUDA and the Urban Town and Country Planning department. Haryana
needs a competent and vibrant Chief Secretary, not a pawn of the builder lobby.

The largest fallout of the change in dispensation at the Centre is
seen in Delhi. The governance of Delhi is at a cross-roads. Union Home Minister
Rajnath Singh appears to be reluctant to change the administrative machinery.
BJP leaders in Delhi are also in a fix, though they are in power nobody heeds
their opinion in the system. Lt Governor of Delhi Najeeb Jung and Chief
Secretary DM Sapolia are holding the fort. It’s been almost a year now that the
entire administration is virtually being run by the coterie of their former
boss, Sheila Dikshit. The presence and influence of Sheila loyalists can be
felt in every department. AGMUT and DANICS cadre officers who are posted
outside Delhi are not being allowed to move in. Officers who have applied to
join the Delhi government are being shunted out of Delhi. Generally, whenever
there is a regime change, the administrative machinery is also reshuffled but a
particular lobby of Sheila loyalists and Sapolia are not allowing the Home
Ministry to touch them. The Joint Secretary (Union Territory) is regularly
updating the Home Minister on the plight of AGMUT and DANICS cadre officers,
but busy Rajnath Singh is not able to spare time to oil the Delhi government
machinery. Everybody is waiting for the results of the Delhi Assembly
elections. Maybe that will have some effect.

CBI Director Ranjit Sinha has gone back to the pavilion. His stint
as Director of the premier investigating agency, CBI, dulled its sheen and any
successor will take time to repair the damage. How the top secret documents were
leaked out and reached Advocate Prashant Bhushan is no secret now. As more news
emanates from CBI headquarters, it appears that there are many brave officers
who silently defied the autocratic and dictatorial behaviour of the Director.
It is learnt Sinha often misbehaved with his subordinates. He even did not
follow basic courtesies with his colleagues: Whenever an officer up to the rank
of IG or DIG used to visit him, he seldom allowed the officer to sit before
him. He appears to have been insensitive, as he used to order his subordinates,
“Just finish it and report to me,” and never cared about their suggestions. CBI
officers who have worked under Sinha say, “We have never seen such a Director
of CBI.”

Andhra Pradesh is agog with
activity. Nara Chandrababu Naidu is a much sought-after Chief Minister and
industrialists, business houses, especially infrastructure companies, are
queuing to meet him. The reason: the new capital of Andhra Pradesh is to come
up in Guntur district with the government identifying 30,000 acres across 17
villages. Approximately, Rs. 40,000 crore will be spent on
the construction of the new state-of-the-art Capital. Surprisingly, most of the
land has been purchased by top Congress leaders, who were part of the State
reorganisation. Globally reputed firms are in the race to become the Project
Advisory and Management Consultant (PAMC) that will advise and help the State
government in the project. The London-based Arup Group, in consortium with the
San Francisco-based Thompson Design Group, the globally known McKinsey, the
joint venture of Korea Land and Housing Corporation and Yooshin Engineering
Corporation (both from the Republic of Korea), the Japan-based consortium of
Oriental Consultants Global and Capital Fortunes Private Limited, Hyderabad,
and the Netherlands-based Royal Haskoning DHV Consulting Private Limited in
consortium with Haskoning DHV Nederland BV are among the eight groups
shortlisted for the PAMC project. As many as 15 companies had submitted the
Expression of Interest. What will happen when 100 smart cities will be built in
India, can be imagined!

Napoleon Bonaparte said that history is the version of past events that
people have decided to agree upon. In the recent Delhi University examination
for the BCom fifth semester, the question paper was found to be a replica of
that distributed in the varsity’s School of Open Learning annual exam. The
administration department claimed that the question papers had been set by a
board of three teachers from various colleges. Despite all such checks and
balances, this plagiarism has put the administration in an embarrassing
situation. Similar claims have unravelled in the past when reputed institutions
and universities have picked up a few questions from various sources to prepare
a bouquet of question papers. In the final examination of Direct Taxes
conducted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India in November 2014,
in most of the question papers, old questions were presented with hardly any
alterations. A similar instance was noticed in the examination of IPCC tax
papers also in November and in earlier examinations conducted by the institute.

Napoleon Bonaparte said that history is the version of past events that
people have decided to agree upon. In the recent Delhi University examination
for the BCom fifth semester, the question paper was found to be a replica of
that distributed in the varsity’s School of Open Learning annual exam. The
administration department claimed that the question papers had been set by a
board of three teachers from various colleges. Despite all such checks and
balances, this plagiarism has put the administration in an embarrassing
situation. Similar claims have unravelled in the past when reputed institutions
and universities have picked up a few questions from various sources to prepare
a bouquet of question papers. In the final examination of Direct Taxes
conducted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India in November 2014,
in most of the question papers, old questions were presented with hardly any
alterations. A similar instance was noticed in the examination of IPCC tax
papers also in November and in earlier examinations conducted by the institute.

PC Chacko is the new man in
charge of the Congress for the forthcoming Delhi Assembly elections. Chacko
knows Delhi since he was a Youth Congress leader and sources disclose that
Rahul Gandhi has given him a free hand. Chacko, who lost his Lok Sabha seat
from Thrissur in Kerala in the general election, has set up a temporary abode
in North Avenue. Delhi Congress leaders are jittery as with great difficulty
they had got used to the former party in-charge, Shakeel Ahmed. The party is in
a mess and the Delhi Pradesh Congress has not even constituted block-level
committees. Ticket-seekers are trying to be friendly with anybody who knows
Chacko, who is facing a problem as the Delhi Congress is vertically divided in
pro-Sheila and anti-Sheila groups. All ticket-seekers belong to one group or
the other. Surprisingly, both groups enjoy the patronage of the top leadership.
As a result, Chacko is planning to focus on individual candidates. Chacko’s
real challenge is to overcome pressure from Delhi’s rich property dealers and
builders who are in the queue for tickets.

The Defence Ministry is today in such a state that it cannot afford a
non-performing minister like AK Antony. In fact, the Defence Minister was more
in the news on account of his honesty and simplicity than for his competence in
the delivery mechanism. All eyes are now on the new Defence Minister, Manohar
Parrikar. The new minister comes dressed in a plain shirt, trousers and chappals.
When he moves out of his office, nobody comes to know. Parrikar does not use a
car to move from South Block to North Block; he generally walks down to meet
his predecessor, Arun Jaitley. He starts giving appointments from 6 am onwards
and reaches the office at 8.30 am. To function smoothly, he has brought in his
old trusted bureaucrat, P Krishnamurthy, as his Private Secretary.
Krishnamurthy has been attached to Parrikar since his first stint as Chief
Minister of Goa. The grapevine has it that Parrikar was not interested in
joining the Defence Ministry though he had been earlier asked twice by Prime
Minister Narendra Modi. But he could not refuse when Modi asked yet again. He
realised that the Prime Minister needed him in Delhi to galvanise and manage the
infamous defence sector. Now the players in the sector are closely watching
Parrikar to see whether he will be able to deliver or will be ejected like
Antony who did more harm than good by just bearing the honesty tag.

The
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is very active in the governance of the
country, albeit cautiously. The social organisation does not want to make any
faux pas this time. It has been observed that some of the ministers are still
waiting for the appointment of their Principal Secretary/Private
Secretary/Personal Assistant. As per sources, a list of government servants who
are RSS sympathisers or those who have sharp technical knowhow is being
prepared. The RSS is also said to be reshuffling its top hierarchy to manage
the BJP in a better way. Ram Madhav, the new general secretary of the BJP, is
likely to be shifted out from the party to some important assignment. Ram Lal,
another RSS pracharak who is deputed to the BJP, has been assigned
charge of overseeing the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in 2017. On the other
hand, Krishna Gopal, an experienced and capable pracharak, has been
brought in as party general secretary from the North-East. All these activities
have changed the dynamics within the BJP office at 9, Ashoka Road, and the
middle and lower rank party office-bearers are finding it difficult to
acclimatise to the fast-changing circumstances in the party.

The market has gained about 40 per cent in a year and is trading at
an all-time high with mid-caps and small caps gaining around 65 per cent and 90
per cent, respectively, mainly driven by change in the sentiment led by the
formation of a government with a strong majority and a Prime Minister who is
the most pro-growth pro-investment leader in the world with the credentials,
will and capability to deliver. But, this also makes Modi the biggest risk for
the market — if something happens to him or if he fails to deliver. Besides a
stable government that holds the promise of reforms, the market is rising due
to change in the environment led by small steps such as scrapping of the
Planning Commission, removal of diesel subsidy, launch of Jan Dhan and Swachh
Bharat programmes, faster decisions and making the bureaucracy work, to name
just a few.

Nations are created on the basis of
race, religion, language or ethnicity. India, however, is a mind-bogglingly
complex combination of all these ingredients and more. Sameness has been the
basis of the making of nations. India stands in total defiance of this formula!

In some
ways, we’re probably the oldest nation on the planet. Although we comprised
over 200 political fragments in the past, we were still seen—from outside and
from within this subcontinent—as an entity with a certain civilisational unity.
And so, this land was called Bharat, or sometimes Hindustan.

The term
‘Hindustan’, it must be remembered, pre-dates religion. It did not refer to one
particular faith. It meant a geographical identity—the land between the
Himalaya and the Indu Sarovar (as the Indian Ocean was known).

The public servant is
definitely handicapped through various conduct rules and is even denied the
freedom of expression

Recently, Bihar-cadre IPS officer,
Amitabh Kumar Das, currently posted as SP, Bihar Human Rights Commission
(BHRC), was in the news. He sent a report to the Inspector General (Special
Branch) of Bihar Police, regarding alleged links of a newly inducted Union
minister with the Ranvir Sena, a banned organisation. The BHRC issued a notice
to Das, seeking an explanation for sending this report.

This was
followed by a prominent political leader from Bihar seeking Das’ immediate
suspension, saying that he had exceeded his jurisdiction by writing a letter to
the IG (Special Branch). The leader made personal comments against Das, saying
he has always been controversial from the beginning.

KK Jaiswal, former UP
Secretary, Rural Development, recounts his days in the service and how he
discovered that life is not a bed of roses

This is the most incredible story of KK Jaiswal, an
honest and straight-forward bureaucrat, who was so desperate without official
accommodation that he decided to leave his home State and accept the post of
Under Secretary in the Government of India because along with it came a
one-room temporary accommodation in the transit hostel.

“It
was becoming impossible to survive in Lucknow without accommodation. So I
decided to accept the offer because I was being given accommodation,” he says.

One of Lal Bahadur Shastri’s first major decisions
as Prime Minister was to offer the third position in the Cabinet to Morarji
Desai, who had been the main aspirant for the top job. Shastri must have known
the result: Desai would refuse. There was no way a stubborn man like him would
take a position lower than Gulzarilal Nanda, who had been just a parliamentary
secretary in Bombay when Desai was not only a minister in the 1937 government
but had been a minister for years since 1946, before becoming the chief
minister. Shastri had succeeded in his manoeuvre to keep Desai out. As the
little man had once said, “I am not as simple as I look.”

SCOPE Meritorious Awards recognise the
excellent work done by Central Public Sector Enterprises in various fields in
2012-13

by Neeraj Mahajan

The central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) have a vital role to
play in transforming India into a world-class global manufacturing hub. But to
make this a reality, the CPSEs need to critically re-examine the existing
systems and develop newer and efficient ways of doing business. This is the
advice that President Pranab Mukherjee gave to the CPSEs while addressing the
Standing Conference of Public Enterprises (SCOPE) Meritorious Awards function
at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on November 5, 2014.

Will
the increase in retirement age check the tendency of government employees to
seek extension by hook or by crook? At present, this does not seem likely

There was a time when government employees retired at
55 years of age. The received wisdom was that most people died at 50 or, at
best, at 55. It then made sense to say goodbye at 55. The government did not
have to pay the employee’s pension for too long a period.

As
medical facilities improved, the average age kept on increasing. The government
was compelled to take note of this trend and raised the age of superannuation
to 58. But, the longevity of the average employee went on improving and a
stage was reached when there was a clamour for a further increase in the age of
retirement.

To retire is not a pretty thought for many
civil servants who hanker for extensions or sinecures. But then there are some who
revel in doing nothing while in service to prepare for post-retirement life

Retirement
Blues…

For India’s civil servants there are two kinds of
retirement—one, compulsory (at age 60) and two, voluntary (after 20/30 years of
qualified service). The overwhelming majority drink the civil service cup to
the brim before fading out. But the resourceful among them, who have access to
powerful patrons, enjoy one or two more helpings by way of extensions,
sinecures, independent directorships, high-level committees or
re-employment. I belong to the voluntary category. True to my belief that
‘one lives but once’, I had academic and army stints before entering the civil
service, which I left 15 years before time to experiment with a corporate
career, consultancy, entrepreneurship, politics and public causes.

With
increase in life expectancy, it makes eminent sense to raise the retirement age
of government employees to 65 years

The little murmur about increase in the age of superannuation of
Central government employees has been quashed for the time being by the
announcement of the government. However, the question whether people should
continue working beyond the age of 60 years, not only in the government but
also in private companies, lingers on and needs to be debated. It is really
surprising that neither the civil service community nor civil society activists
have raised the matter in public discourse. The activists seem to be obsessed
with finding fault with bureaucratic functioning and unconcerned with improving
their productivity in governance.

Alexander, an IAS officer, served as
Governor of Maharashtra till the age of 72. Brajesh Mishra, an Indian Foreign
Service officer, served former Prime Minister of India Atal Behari Vajpayee
till the age of 76. TKA Nair, an IAS officer, served as Adviser to Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh till the age of 73. Pulok Chatterjee, an IAS officer,
served Manmohan Singh till the age of 65. K Padmanabhaiah was working as
interlocutor for the North-East for almost 10 years after retiring as Home
Secretary. BN Yugandhar, after retirement as Principal Secretary to late Prime
Minister PV Narasimha Rao, worked elsewhere for many years and was brought back
as Member, Planning Commission in UPA-I. SS Sidhu after retirement served
in ICAO, a UN body, as its head and later as Governor, Manipur and Goa. ESL
Narasimhan, after retiring as Director, Intelligence Bureau, has been serving
as Governor of Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh for the last eight years.

The year 2014 will be remembered
as a milestone year which proved to be a game changer in the Indian polity.
Narendra Modi is the hero of 2014. This will be a red letter year in the life
and times of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP. Finally, the
RSS is emerging from its shell and for the first time in the history of India,
guiding the governance of the country. The other facet of this year is that the
125-year-old Congress party has receded into oblivion. This year will also be
remembered for Rahul Gandhi failing to prove himself as a leader of India’s
largest and oldest party. The year will also be marked for Manmohan Singh
ruling 120 crore people for 10 years without having a political constituency or
facing the electorate. What a paradox! History has begun judging Manmohan Singh
from 2014 as he allowed scam after scam, just to remain in power. Again, the
year will be noted for the display of how to market and use multimedia to
influence, motivate and fetch votes.

About us

gfiles is the country's first independent magazine written, designed and produced for India's civil services—the vast and formidable
network of bureaucracies and public sector organisations that
provides continuity and stability to this nation's
governance.